Business Travel; Best Western is expanding its share of corporate travelers by aiming at those on a tight budget.

By Edwin McDowell

Published: April 14, 1999

PROBABLY few people think of Pokhara, Nepal, and business travel in the same breath. But Best Western recently opened its newest hotel there, the New Hotel Crystal, about 90 miles west of Katmandu. Along with 40 air-conditioned rooms, satellite television and currency exchange facilities, it has a business center with fax, E-mail and copy services.

That brings to 185 the number of international hotels that Best Western has added during the last year, along with 171 domestic properties. Altogether, there are about 3,800 Best Westerns in 76 countries and territories, and next Jan. 1 it will top the 4,200 mark when almost 400 Consort Hotels in Britain will also carry the Best Western logo.

Best Western is not only the world's biggest lodging brand; all of its properties are independently owned and operated. They are gathered under the Best Western banner not as franchises but in an association whose members pay for marketing, national advertising, the toll-free reservations number and similar expenses.

While still heavily patronized by leisure travelers, Best Western's share of business travelers has been inching up. Three months ago it started Business Plus, a program designed to appeal to those who are self-employed or on a tight corporate budget. Some 350 hotels participate in the program, which requires that at least 10 rooms or 10 percent of the property's total rooms meet standards that include king-size or queen-size beds, desks, phone lines for computers, lounge armchairs, clock radios, coffee makers and free access to toll-free numbers.

Heading Off Scandal

Hoping to be host to the Summer Olympic Games in 2012, and determined to avoid a replay of the tawdry details surrounding Salt Lake City's winning bid for next year, Cincinnati has established an ethics panel. In addition to developing a code of conduct, the committee will also consider opening the Games' financial arrangements to public scrutiny. But the competition to land the Games is likely to be as fierce as the competition in the athletic events, because a dozen other cities have also expressed interest in winning the 2012 Games.

Discounts in the Wings

When normal air service resumes to such cities as Sofia, Bulgaria; Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina; Skopje, Macedonia, and Tirana, Albania, passengers wanting to fly there from Kennedy International Airport in New York will be able to do so for about $550, round trip, on Austrian Airlines. In addition to what amounts to a 40 percent discount, they will also be allowed three pieces of baggage, instead of two, up to a total of 200 pounds.

Data on Hotels

Health and fitness centers are in 48 percent of hotels in the United States, compared with 43.7 percent in 1996 and 36.4 percent in 1994. Voice mail was in 52 percent of hotel rooms in 1998, compared with 22 percent two years earlier. And the percentage of hotels offering rentals of videocassette recorders has remained at about 25 percent since 1996.

Those percentages do not include all hotels, but were compiled from replies from more than 9,400 of the nearly 40,000 hotels surveyed for the American Hotel and Motel Association. It is, the association said, the most comprehensive such study ever conducted under its auspices.

Business travelers are not likely to be surprised that more than 35 percent of the luxury hotels provide rooms with safes. Or that one-third of the luxury properties sampled offer cell phone rental. It is also no big surprise that a smaller percentage of such hotels now offer free local calls than in the recent past. What is surprising is that the percentage plummeted to 34 last year from 48 just two years earlier, while 60 percent of economy hotels and 46 percent of budget hotels still throw in free local calls.

One-Upmanship

You know those apples many hotels keep at the check-in desk, presumably for ravenous guests? Not to be outdone, the Premier Hotel in Times Square in New York gives away popsicles. But, as befits a hotel whose posted room rates start at $395 a night, these are champagne popsicles. Enclosed in wrappers and presented on ice in a champagne bucket, they are served in the lounge during cocktail hour.